“It happens more often than you think,” Head Chef Aaron Van Timmeren said of the cold call. “She had some really good cheese, and the price was right so I ordered some.”

Two years later, Van Timmeren is ordering upward of 80 pounds of the cheese made by Mary and her husband, John, at Country Winds Creamery in Zeeland for Restaurant Week. It’s just one example of how the owners at the Essence Restaurant Group source local farms for produce, protein and dairy products to help promote local sustainability.

Last Saturday, six MLive/Grand Rapids Press readers joined Van Timmeren and me on my annual farm-to-fork tour to kickoff Restaurant Week. This year's tour took us from Bistro Bella Vita out to farms and dairies in West Michigan and then back again to see the process that puts local produce on diners' plates.

Curious goats at Country Winds Creamery and Goat Farm on Saturday morning. Todd Chance, Aaron Van Timmerman and Sally Zarafonetis hosted a limo ride from Grand Rapids to Zeeland, Holland and back to tour farms and dairies. The tour went to Founders Brewery and ended with a three-course meal at Bistro Bella Vita featuring all the fresh produce and local materials seen at the farms. Bistro Bella Vita showcased new entrees as a sneak peek for Restaurant Week. (Katy Batdorff | MLive.com)

Bistro Bella Vita’s General Manager Brad Teachout described his recent purchase of pigs from local 4-H students at a fair. The pigs were butchered locally and served at the restaurant.

“It’s an accounting challenge. You write a lot of checks,” said Teachout. “It would be easier to cut a check to one or two suppliers, but we have a passion for local, natural and sustainable systems when it comes to our food.”

Country Winds Creamery

The Windemullers’ farm, Country Winds Creamery, started with a just a few goats when Mary's health required a change in diet. They planned to produce raw milk in a 4-H goat sharing operation with their daughters. The business began to grown in 1999.

They now have more than 125 goats (each one has a name), which they hook up to a milking station that John designed and constructed himself. They produce 180 gallons of milk a week out of their garage, one glass jug at a time.

Add to that the five cheeses the creamery started making two years ago – tomme, gouda, feta, crottin, and multiple flavors of chevre – and the project has turned into a full-time business.

John, who is also a full-time electrical contractor and service department manager, spends most of his “down time” working in the creamery.

“You learn the hard way,” he said explaining his self-taught process. “We’ve thrown away a lot of cheese, but we are firm believers in the old saying ‘You are what you eat.’ “If you want to get healthy, you’ve got to eat healthy.”

We toured the farm, pet some goats, and sampled some raw goat’s milk and sliced into some fresh cheeses the farm now sells wholesale to restaurants and at farmers markets around West Michigan.

Crisp Country Acres Farm

At our second stop, Dave VanderZwaag, who was born and raised in the farmhouse at Crisp Country Acres Farm in Holland, took us for a tour. We had a great time “raiding his fridge” – if a refrigerator could be used to describe the two huge rooms of cold storage separated by garage doors.

Freshly picked potatoes, tomatoes, radishes, apples, beets and plums were admired (and sometimes tasted) before we moved on to the fields where we added hand-picked Brussels sprouts, jalapeno peppers, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, cabbages, squash and more.

I took a step back in time and cut two fresh stalks of rhubarb to chew on just like I did from my backyard when I was growing up.

The variety and quantity of the produce was impressive and we had no problem filling up a bucket or two to take home.

Founders Brewing

Restaurant Week’s theme this year is perfect pairings so we all piled into the limo from Dadds Magic Bus and Limo and made a quick stop at Founders Brewing. General Manager Moses Gonzales swung by our table and gave us a quick history lesson of the brewery and answered questions about hops and the brewing process.

After our craft beers, we were treated to a three-course meal at Bistro Bella Vita featuring many of the ingredients we had just seen and touched. Some of the plates were made almost entirely of produce from the farms we had just visited.

Here was this year’s menu:

Amuse-bouche: Country Winds goat cheese with honey and mint with Field and Fire bread, blueberries, radishes and celery hearts and black peppercorn butterscotch

This was my third time hosting the tour and I learn or try something new every time. I never thought I would milk a goat and drink its raw milk, learn about "noble rot" as it pertains to wine, and I'd never seen a Brussels sprout plant in person. Watching more people find a newly discovered appreciation for what eating local can truly mean and how well some Michigan farms and restaurants raise and prepare local products is always a good thing.

Restaurant Week GR, Aug. 13-24, is a 12-day event featuring more than 60 restaurants serving farm-fresh and creative three-course meals for $28 or some two-person, three-course meals for $28. As part of the event, $1 from each meal sold goes toward student scholarships to Grand Rapids Community College's Secchia Institute for Culinary Education.